Cardiac arrest while exercising on mountains in national or provincial parks: A national observational study from 2012 to 2015

Background

Previous studies on cardiac arrest in mountainous areas were focused on environmental features such as altitude and temperature. However, those are limited to factors affecting the prognosis of patients after cardiac arrest. We analyzed the cardiac arrests in national or provincial parks located in the mountains and determined the factors affecting the prognosis of patients after cardiac arrest.

Methods

This study included all emergency medical service (EMS) treated patients over the age of 40 experiencing out-of-hospital cardiac arrests (OHCAs) of presumed cardiac etiology during exercise, between January 2012 and December 2015. The main focus of interest was the location of cardiac arrest occurrence (national mountain parks and provincial parks vs. other sites). The main outcome was survival to discharge and multivariable logistic regression was performed to adjust for possible confounding effects.

Results

A total 1835 patients who suffered a cardiac arrest while exercising were included. From these, 68 patients experienced cardiac arrest in national or provincial parks, and 1767 occurred in other locations. The unadjusted and adjusted ORs (95% CI) for a good cerebral performance scale (CPC) were 0.09 (0.01–0.63) and 0.08(0.01–0.56), survival discharges were 0.13(0.03–0.53) and 0.11 (0.03–0.48).

Conclusions

Cardiac arrests occurring while exercising in the mountainous areas have worse prognosis compared to alternative locations.